In mail order, central fill and large retail pharmacies, prescription drugs are dispensed in a high volume. For such services, it is known to use an automatic pill dispensing system to carry out the dispensing of the prescription drugs automatically at a rapid rate.
In some high volume systems, separate conveyors and vial carriers may be used to convey vials to and from the automated dispensing apparatus. The vial carriers are typically employed to prevent a vial from toppling over as it is conveyed at high speeds. In many high volume dispensing operations, vials of the same size are filled consecutively (in many cases with the same drug), so carriers of similar size are also used. The vials may be labeled prior to or after filling and/or capping.
A known automatic pill dispensing system is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,971,541 to Williams et al. This system has the capacity to select an appropriate vial, label the vial, fill the vial with a desired quantity of a selected pharmaceutical tablet, apply a cap to the filled vial, and convey the labeled, filled, capped vial to an offloading station for retrieval. The system has a large number of different bins, or cells, each of which is filled with a specific drug. Two robotic arms transfer each vial between stations for accomplishing many of the various above-mentioned tasks. Counting and dispensing from the cells is carried out with air and suction applied to the cell to agitate pills and direct them to a dispensing outlet, where they are counted as they are dispensed. An updated version of this system is illustrated and described in, for example, U.S. Patent Publication No. 2009-0178464, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated herein in its entirety. In this later version of the system, only one robotic arm is incorporated, and the vial selection and labeling tasks are performed before the robotic arm picks up the vial. In each instance, the air/suction-based dispensing technique can provide accurate counting and dispensing at high speeds.
It may be desirable to provide a high volume dispensing system that capitalizes on advantages inherent in the Williams et al. type automated dispensing machine.